


Holliday Express

by chelseagirl



Category: Alias Smith and Jones
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-07
Updated: 2018-08-07
Packaged: 2019-06-23 01:57:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,173
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15595695
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chelseagirl/pseuds/chelseagirl
Summary: Curry and Heyes gamble with Doc Holliday, and then he asks them to take another gamble . . . on keeping him safe while he makes a delivery, even if it is the last thing he does.





	Holliday Express

“Excuse me, gentlemen,” came a softly drawling voice from just behind them.

Hannibal Heyes and Kid Curry, both seated at the bar, turned around quickly to see a tall, thin man with a drooping mustache standing there. He had dark hair, light eyes, and an ever-so-slightly arrogant expression.

“I do beg your pardon, but I b’lieve the two of you are new around these parts. And this town, despite its many charms, is sorely deficient in anyone who can give me a decent game of poker.”

“Well, we’d like to oblige, but—“ the Kid began, before his partner jumped in.

“That is, we’d like to find a good game, ourselves.”

“But Joshua, weren’t we?” Blue eyes met dark ones, with a glance that spoke volumes. “On our way out of town?”

Heyes shook his head. “Don’t have to be leaving ‘til the day after next. Not if there’s something worth staying around for, that is. But three of us, that’s not much of a game, now is it?”

“I’m sure I can rustle up one or two more who aren’t entirely unworthy of the challenge,” said the stranger.

“Well, then, that sounds like a plan,” said Heyes. “Name’s Joshua Smith, and this my partner, Thaddeus Jones.”

“John Henry,” said the man, extending a hand for a shake, first to Heyes and then to Curry. “But folks mostly call me Doc.” He coughed a little, turning his head away.

The two reformed outlaws looked at each other again, Curry’s expression projecting “Now what have you gotten us into?” and Heyes’ responding shrug suggesting “Could be fun? Maybe?”

Eight hours later, and nearly dawn, Hannibal Heyes had to concede that there might be one or two people in the world who were better poker players than he was. One, named John Henry “Doc” Holliday, in particular.

“Told you so,” muttered Kid Curry, who’d dropped out of the game several hours in, and still had enough money that he and Heyes could at least pay their hotel bill.

As Heyes pushed the rest of his chips in Doc’s direction, and folded, with a disgusted look on his face, Holliday raised his hand as if to stop the other man from leaving.

“If you and your partner would like to earn some of that back, I got a job needs doin’, and I could surely use your help.” Doc coughed again, as he’d been doing throughout the evening, a hacking cough that never seemed so much to end as to simply pull itself back, waiting for the next time.

Kid Curry rolled his eyes, but then nodded. The remaining players excused themselves.

“We’re listening,” said Heyes.

“I require an escort for a small” *cough* “delivery I am making. Though I am well capable of” *cough* “handling myself, I am expecting that I may not be allowed to make it” *cough* “without a certain level of, shall we say, interference?”

Heyes and Curry simply looked at him.

“That is, I am concerned about an . . . unevenness in numbers. Two more on my side would go a long way to reassuring me as to my personal safety. Especially two such as yourselves.”

“What makes you think we’d be any good as escorts?” asked Heyes.

Holliday coughed again, raising a handkerchief to his mouth. “You, I can tell, are a man of many talents, and I am certain well able to take care of yourself.” He turned his gaze to Curry. “And you, sir, I can see from the way you carry yourself, from the way you look around every room you walk into, and from a certain something about your air . . . you are obviously a man who knows your way around a gun.”

Curry looked away from something intense in the man’s gaze.

“What is this delivery you’re making?” asked Heyes, somewhat abruptly.

Holliday’s light eyes were shaded by his hat, and his mouth partially covered by his drooping mustache, so that he could almost mask the troubled expression that crossed his features. “I have been dying since I was fourteen years old, and first contracted this disease. And I have lived far longer than ever was expected, by myself or anyone else. But the end is coming, and there is someone dear to me, someone to whom I wish to pass along most of the funds I have accumulated at the card table and elsewhere.” He coughed.

“Big Nose Kate?” asked Curry. The story of Doc Holliday and his on-again off-again lover was almost as widely known as the story of the OK Corral itself.

“You will understand that I am less than enamored of that nickname,” said Holliday, mildly. “But yes, Kate, my lady love. She is living several days’ ride from here, at the moment, and I would like to see the money in her hands before my end.”

The two ex-outlaws looked at each other, then turned back to Doc Holliday.

“Who exactly are you expecting to be after you? Someone wantin’ to steal the money, or a posse, thinkin’ some of it might belong to them?” Curry couldn’t help but express his suspicions.

“We’d prefer to stay on the right side of the law,” Heyes said, quickly.

Doc looked them up and down once again. “I see. Well, as it happens, you are in luck. My well-known friendship with Wyatt Earp has had a salutary effect on my dealings with the law. But I have had remarkably good luck in recent months, and my winnings are beginning to hang heavy on me – which is why I’d be happy for you to earn back what you lost last night.”

“Don’t think it’s luck,” muttered Heyes, while Curry satisfied himself with “Too much money?”

“They say you can’t take it with you, and as I have said, I am nearing the end of my road.”

The details having been finalized, Heyes and Curry made their excuses, and Holliday settled in at the bar for what looked to be a long night’s drinking.

“I hope he’s in shape to ride with us tomorrow,” said Curry to his partner.

“I don’t think he’s in shape for much, Kid, and I also don’t think that’s gonna stop him.”

The next morning, Doc Holliday was waiting for them in their hotel lobby, looking like death warmed over. “Good morning, gentlemen,” he said, with a chipper attitude which entirely contradicted his appearance.

They rode out of town, and for most of the day, without incident. That evening, by previous agreement, they stopped at a saloon which was one of the few buildings in a small settlement. While Kid Curry turned his attention to a sandwich and a beer, Heyes and Holliday scanned the room to see if any interesting gambling was going on.

Having looked around, Heyes thought better of it, and remained with his partner at the bar. Holliday, however, seemed restless, wandering up to the stage where a second-rate chanteuse sang a song, and over past an intense-looking card game. He returned, and ordered a round of whiskeys.

“Well, I’ve seen all I need to see, for now,” he said. They ate and drank – Holliday eating almost nothing, and drinking at twice the rate of his companions – for a time in quiet, until they heard someone clearing his throat, and turned around to find a small group of men standing behind, now in front, of them.

“Doc Holliday, we meet again,” said one of them, a not especially intelligent-looking man, squarely built and with a sneer on his face.

“I must ask you to excuse me, sir, but I’m afraid I no longer recall the circumstances of our first acquaintance.” There was something at once both arrogant and polite in his drawling tones.

The man spat into the sawdust on the floor at Holliday’s feet. “You came close to ruining me, year before last, and you’ve got the front to say you don’t remember?”

“My health being what it is, sir, and my gambling being, alas, frequent, there is much I don’t remember.” He coughed. “I hope that you have learned a valuable lesson, however – that you should never wager anything you cannot afford to lose.”

At that, the man lunged for Doc, but Heyes and Curry intervened, Heyes interposing himself between the two and Curry grabbing the aggressor by the shoulders. The man and his friends looked like they were ready to brawl, ‘til they saw the icy look in Curry’s blue eyes, and backed down.

Holliday’s accuser and his friends made their way outside through the saloon’s swinging doors. Once things had settled down, Holliday said, “It appears I have made a good choice of travelling companions.”

  
  


In the morning, they started out early, as they planned to arrive at Kate’s before nightfall. Things went smoothly for most of the morning, as the terrain was wide open and there was nowhere really for potential trouble to hide. Shortly before noon, however, they found themselves approaching more mountainous terrain, and grew wary.

It was when they were riding single file through a narrow valley in the foothills that they were set upon, by half-a-dozen men. Before Heyes could even draw his sidearm, both Doc and the Kid had let off shots. But while Holliday shot his man square in the chest, Curry hit his in the shoulder and knocked him back off his horse. The one who Curry shot would certainly recover, while Doc’s might not.

“Clever,” muttered Holliday, and changed tactics, following Curry, and hitting his next square on the upper arm, as the Kid did.

Heyes, a fine shot but not in the same class as the other two, waited until the men drew nearer, but as the two unwounded turned tail and ran, ended up firing merely a warning shot. “Not stoppin’ to help their boys?” he muttered.

“All but the one should be able to ride their horses, once they catch ‘em,” Curry replied. Their erstwhile foes were mostly up and moving about, but seemed to have lost interest in their quarry, and rather, retreated after their mounts. Only Doc’s first wounded lay utterly still, and it was Curry and Heyes who rode up to see if they could assist him.

It was too late, however, and he expired, even as Doc himself approached his victim. “Unfortunately, I am not so much a physician, as a dentist, as you may have heard. I do have some rudimentary training, but I am afraid that my aim was a bit too true.” 

“We don’t hold with killin’, when it can be avoided, but . . . “

“This’ll be reckoned self-defense,” said Doc, narrowing his eyes. “And not just because of my friendship with Wyatt.” He looked at them more closely. “But I’ve only heard of one man whose shooting equaled my own and who avoided killing, Mister Curry. I thought it might be you – rumor has it you’ve been laying low and staying out of trouble with the law.”

“No, you’re mistaken. My name is Thaddeus Jones.”

“Jones and Smith? What are the odds of that? Which makes your friend, who gave me quite the run at the poker table, the equally legendary Hannibal Heyes.” *cough* “Having been on both sides of the law, myself, if you are making a change in your life, I support you entirely. But I will have to report this man’s death to the sheriff.” *cough* He looked at the pair. “The responsibility is mine, but I expect we should part ways before we arrive in town.”

“That’s probably not a bad idea,” said Heyes. “Just because, although we’re not them, we do bear a distinct resemblance to . . . “

Holliday reached inside his breast pocket, and withdrew a number of banknotes. “What was promised, and a little more, for the pleasure of your company. And because I have a distinct soft spot for men like myself, who’ve seen both sides of things. Farewell, Mister Heyes and Mister Curry.”

“We’re not—“ Kid Curry began, but Heyes simply nodded and said, “Goodbye . . . Doc.”

Doc Holliday was wracked by a spasm of coughing, but in a moment, had recovered himself. “When you hear of my demise, as is sure to happen within the next year, I just ask that you drink a glass of whiskey in my honor.” Then he mounted his horse, and rode away.

The outlaws watched him go, and then turned south, in the opposite direction from their recent assailants.

“I only wish,” said the Kid, “that we could’ve met Big Nose Kate. She’s supposed to be quite the lady, despite the—“ he gestured at his own nose.

“Probably just as well we didn’t,” mused Heyes, “or with your patented Kid Curry charm, you might’ve made Doc jealous and gotten him to change his mind about telling the law about us.”

The Kid laughed. “I dunno, Heyes. You might be more her type – the dark-haired gambler in a battered black hat.”

Heyes just gave his partner that winning smile of his and said, “Guess we’ll never know, Kid. Guess we’ll never know.”

And off they rode.

**Author's Note:**

> This was another challenge story, on one of my favorite topics: Doc Holliday. I'm a big fan of _Wynonna Earp_ , especially of Tim Rozon's portrayal of Doc Holliday.
> 
> I don't find the depiction of Doc Holliday in _Alias Smith and Jones_ to be especially interesting. (The episodes are "Which Way to the O.K. Corral?" and "The Ten Days That Shook Kid Curry" and they're Roger Davis episodes, which means half the fans haven't seen them anyway.) So I thought I'd give the guys a different first (and presumably last, considering his condition) meeting with Doc. This is intended to be the historical Doc Holliday, not a crossover with _Wynonna Earp_ , but I did envision Doc Holliday looking and sounding like Tim's Doc.


End file.
